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Jeremiah Karpowicz, Executive Editor for ProVideo CoalitionJeremiah Karpowicz always envisioned a career as a screenwriter, but found the autonomy and freedom he was looking for in the digital space. He has created articles, videos, newsletters, ebooks and plenty more for various communities as a contributor and editor. He has also worked as the Executive Editor for ProVideo Coalition where he was first introduced to UAV technology. You can get in touch with him on Twitter: @jeremiahkarp « Less

Jeremiah Karpowicz, Executive Editor for ProVideo CoalitionJeremiah Karpowicz always envisioned a career as a screenwriter, but found the autonomy and freedom he was looking for in the digital space. He has created articles, videos, newsletters, ebooks and plenty more for various communities as a contributor and editor. He has also worked as the Executive … More »

It’s easy to see why surveying and mapping professionals have taken such a keen interest in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology. Gathering info from the sky has been an approach that’s been utilized for a long time now, but the costs associated with traditional manned aircraft makes the endeavor extremely expensive. UAVs offer a cost effective alternative with far more flexibility in terms of being able to get into the air quickly and without as much logistical support.

What’s more, UAVs can improve data collection accuracy and efficiency, optimize a workflow while also enabling the production of cost effective turnkey DSM’s and orthos whenever they’re needed. Simply put, UAVs make it far easier to gather the info needed to create maps by reducing costs and simplifying the image-capturing process.

In a world that is constantly changing and rapidly growing, having a stable infrastructure is vital to the economy and everyday life. It’s fair to say, we take our infrastructure for granted and only give it the attention that it needs when something goes wrong or is in need of repair, resulting in interruption of traffic flow, transportation of goods and utilities, and high costs. The facts are clear that an aging infrastructure is inevitable. Roads, bridges and rail tracks age through usage over the years and damage due to natural disasters and accidents can speed up that aging process.

Transportation Departments and local governing agencies usually team up to create Operating and Maintenance Plans (O&M Plans) to keep their infrastructure in optimal condition. O&M Plans usually are a direct result of a well-devised project plan and development at the birth of a project, before it even breaks ground. In today’s economy, every dollar counts and every decision needs to be a good one in order to obtain a better world of transporting people, goods and materials safely and efficiently. Autodesk’s Infraworks is the tool that can and has been making project planning and development for infrastructure designs better and more efficient.

The demand for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) services and tools continues to rise. This was reflected in a recent industry survey in which 73% of respondents noted experiencing a growth in demand for GIS services. Many of the respondents already include GIS in their survey workflow or offer it as a service, and when asked which GIS tools have the most potential, 42% reported Mobile GIS Applications, with cloud-based GIS Applications/Web Portals next at 27%.1Read the rest of How GIS Professionals Can Create a Flexible, Mobile Workflow

In a recent blog on this site, Matt Sheehan suggested that many people who are new to GIS don’t truly understand the value of the technology. He suggested several ways to demonstrate the value of GIS technology in the workplace, such as showing people how it can help them perform tasks more quickly and easily.

Another area where more work is needed to demonstrate the value of GIS is in education, especially in K-12. Last year in the National Geographic blog, National Geographic’s Vice President for Education Daniel C. Edelson called GIS the “missing educational technology.” While various initiatives have focused on how to use more technology in the classroom, Edelson wrote that applications like GIS tools are often left out.

Data companies are not a novelty in the marketing world. For instance, RL Polk, a leader in automotive data was founded in the late 1800’s, Acxiom emerged in the late 1960s, Experian flourished most notably in the 1990’s when it was purchased by GUS (Great Universal Stores) and later demerged. All provide valuable insights on audiences, specific consumer behaviors and tendencies. GIS companies, such as Esri, are also driving a stake in the ground as the mapping giant gathers a vast amount of info and redistributes to companies that can leverage the data. Each data provider brings their own insights and flavors to the table. Complementing how those insights are packaged, delivered and reinforced provide the real value.

Location-based advertising technology companies have been known to team with consumer data providers to draw insights from demographic and lifestyle data. This data is then presented to marketers with the ability to reach specific consumers on their desktop and mobile devices. The consumer currency can be pulled, sliced-and-diced from the provider’s proprietary database and suited to fit most ad technology, depending how granular the data can be packaged.

A Different Approach GeoExt, a combination of ExtJS and OpenLayers 2, allows one to create web applications without writing any HTML and CSS, which was useful back when all browsers behaved differently. However, with HTML5 and CSS3 available in all modern browsers, a more modular stack adds flexibility.

With GeoExt, the easiest way to read in the list of available census variables (topics) was to pre-process them and load them as JSON. Rather than spending much time on user interface work, we’ve added Bootstrap to leverage the JQuery dependency and save some lines of JavaScript code. With JQuery, a few lines of code are enough to create drop-down options directly from the lines of the original metadata text file:

The event attracted a diverse group of experts and novices from organizations such as NOAA, the World Bank, USAID, the American Red Cross, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, the CDC and many others. It’s amazing to watch this group’s energy and how the project is rapidly unfolding

Many great presentations and talks shaped the QGIS User Group meeting. Jeff Johnson and Larry Shaffer presented the highlights of the history and evolution of QGIS from a shapefile viewer to full-fledged desktop application. Jeff went into detail about specific applications of QGIS, highlighting examples from NOAA and NASA. Larry then discussed the QGIS ecosystem and open source development community, noting that plug-in development has been a long-time focus within the community and core development is expected to pick up steam in the coming year.

The State of the Map US 2014 conference, a two-day conference covering all things OpenStreetMap, was held last month in Washington, D.C. As a recent member of Boundless, it was nice to attend as part of the Boundless contingent.

Aside from the inspiration provided by the gorgeous weather and the cherry blossoms, there was also inspiration in abundance at the conference for cartographers. Every cartographer should become familiar with OpenStreetMap data if they aren’t already. It’s a bit of a bear to work with because it is in a different structure than we are normally used to (nodes and ways mean anything to you?) but you’ll see the benefits if you download a state-wide or city-wide extract from one of several sites (such as geofabrik or Metro Extracts) and start using it in your map-making medium of choice. The dataset provides a comprehensive collection of roads, buildings and building types, points of interest, and so on. And it’s free! There were many talks I didn’t get to see because there were two concurrent tracks, but the ones that I attended focused heavily on tools that for using OpenStreetMap data, including GeoGit, TileMill, Esri, QGIS, and PostGIS. However, there were still some cartographic takeaways. Read the rest of Thoughts from State of the Map US 2014

The evolution of digital content creation has unleashed the productivity of engineers, designers, creative professionals and students everywhere, but it has also set corresponding expectations incredibly high for that productivity as well, making it crucial for those individuals to use the proper tools to help their visions to come to life. Professional and aspiring engineers and designers cannot do their job these days without specialized applications for 3D modeling, digital content creation, and computer aided engineering and design such asAdobe Creative Cloud andAutoCAD. The problem is, for some, they’re being forced to run these applications on notebooks or desktops that don’t have enough power to generate the performance they need because they can’t afford a traditional workstation.